T206, or not....let's have a continuing conversation....Ty Cobb Smoking Tobacco card

[G1911]

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

I should have just said your name without quoting your whole point.

The background is from old threads and TedZ's assertion that T213-1 should be called T206, which I agree with, but the reason I have been able to collect them, is because they have been called T213-1, and viewed by collectors as crummy broders, instead of very rare-backed t206's.

I can see keeping Piedmont 150 350 and 460 together. It gets complicated when you put Clarence Beaumont SC 150 30 with a Demmitt Polar Bear as the same set. One is in a cigarette product, and one is in a pouch of tobacco. Why not throw in a Cobb from a tin can with some gloss?

I think it's a fun topic, like the green bird on the 1978 Topps Bob Forsch topic, not a terribly important topic.

Whether T213-1 should be called a T206 is a good choice of a case where it is not so clear what the intent was. Is T30 and T118 the same set? T3 and T9? I would certainly classify T3 and T9 as one by designer intent. I don't think anyone in 1910 considered that a set could not be issued with scrap and cigarettes both; that seems to be a modern thought creation. Other sets were and carry the same designs, in the same series, at the same time, with the same set name and have no indication at all that they were considered different sets. It seems very hard to conclude, relying on the primary evidence, that Piedmont and Polar Bear and American Beauty were conceived as completely different sets instead of the same set being packaged with multiple brands, often closely related to each other in the ATC corporate structure.

I think we know that having the same picture used does not make a card from the same set. Nobody argues a Victory is a T206 or that a T219 is a T218; there were several reuses and reprintings that were their own sets. I think the difference with the Cobb back is not that it came in a tin or has some gloss (other sets have glossed and unglossed; T69), but is that it was a very limited release single promo card and probably wasn't thought of as part of any set at all; just a standalone promo for with a tiny print run. Is George Bush part of the 1990 Topps set? No. Is it related to it by virtue of using the design and being from the time? Sure. Just like a T223 is related to a T220.

I would hope nobody would consider any topic in a baseball card group terribly important in the grand scheme of things